Biography

Andrea Hershatter is Senior Associate Dean and Director of the BBA Program in Emory’s Goizueta Business School. She has led this program for over two decades and helped to achieve its nine consecutive BusinessWeek ranking in the Top 10, a distinction held by only four undergraduate business programs in the world. She is the creator and chair of the Emory Entrepreneurship Summit that has connected students with Emory’s most noteworthy entrepreneurial alumni, four of whom have now reached unicorn status. Among other initiatives, three efforts she is currently pursuing are the creation of multiple liberal arts/business integrative initiatives with Emory College, the measurement of locus of control development amongst business students and a reimagining of the entire BBA curriculum.

Andrea holds a faculty position in the Organization and Management area and teaches entrepreneurship, incorporating business model canvas and design thinking approaches. Her research focuses on creativity and innovation, passions she combines with a strong interest in popular culture. She regularly consultants to corporations and academia on the Millennial generation, and has been an outside expert to the Graduate Management Admission Council in enhancing undergraduate student outreach. She is a frequent presenter on the topics of entrepreneurship, generational workplace culture, and management education. Andrea currently serves on the advisory board of the Economic Empowerment Initiative, a non-profit organizations focused on inner-city youth and on the board of directors for The Speech School, the nation’s most comprehensive center for language and literacy. She is additionally on the boards of multiple entrepreneurial ventures including Campus MovieFest, the world's largest student film festival, and PrayerSpark, the first platform to connect renowned spiritual leaders to those seeking prayer and affirmation. She is additionally active in a wide array of professional organizations and routinely holds leadership roles on multiple Emory committees, including having chaired the Emory Committee on Student Entrepreneurship. She is a GoBeyond honoree for the Goizueta 100th Celebration and is the recipient of the university-wide Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, the Don Keough Award for Excellence and the Goizueta Outstanding Staff Impact Award, recognizing the most significant contributions to the School's growth, development and success during its 90 year history.

Education

  • PhD candidate (Advanced Standing) in Institute of Liberal Arts
    Emory University
  • Master's in Fuqua School of Business
    Duke University
  • Bachelor's in Freeman School
    Tulane University

Millennials and the World of Work: An Organization and Management Perspective

Journal of Business and Psychology
November 17, 2024
2010

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide a contextual overview that illustrates and illuminates some of the defining characteristics of the Millennial generation. This study offers a framework for understanding the most compelling issues organizations face in their efforts to effectively incorporate the generation currently entering the workforce.

Design/Methodology/Approach

This is a review and commentary that links together current research on Millennials in the workplace into a cohesive narrative, supplemented by several short business case studies and the authors’ own research, insights, and experiences working with Millennials in a university.

Findings

This article explores the ways in which college-educated members of the Millennial generation approach the world of work, especially in the context of their particular relationships with technology and institutions. Drawing on our experience as educators, we share our observations, along with those of others, highlighting organizational best practices when we have encountered them. We have grounded our thinking in the context of research and surveys about this population, including our own work, and examined the particular behaviors that seem to be most relevant to the tasks of recruiting, managing, and developing the generation now entering the workforce.

Implications

While cross-generational workplace tensions are neither new nor likely to dissipate, we believe that additional insights gained by exploring this complex and sometimes paradoxical generation will facilitate the ability to tap into their many abilities and talents.

Originality/Value

This article sets aside the question of whether there are genuine differences in values across generations and instead examines two compelling factors that differentiate Millennial behaviors in the workplace. The first is their incorporation of technology as a “sixth sense” and as a fully integrated means of interacting with the world. The second is their expectation of organizational accommodation, stemming from their prior experiences and the degree to which institutions have made themselves malleable to the needs and desires of this cohort. Although much has been written about Millennials in the workforce, this approach provides a unique and nuanced understanding of the genesis of certain sets of behaviors and expectations.